Tokyo trip

Ok, so today I went into the Tokyo area with Tara, Leigh Ann, Jessica and Jacq (the Kanuma ALT's basically). Here is how the day went.

We met at 7:45 to get tickets and catch the train from the Shinkanuma station into Tokyo (I can't remember the station we got off at, not important at this point). From there, Tara left the rest of us to get her hair done and we continued on to Akihabara (that would be the electronics district). Very interesting place, I'll need to go back there sometime. We wandered around some until things opened (they don't do so until 10!), then went into some shops and broused. I didn't see anything I needed so I didn't buy anything there. After Akihabara we got on another train/subway (they look very similar to me) and went into Shinjuku. The Keio plaza hotel (from the tokyo orientation) is also in Shinjuku, I recognised some of the places that we went. In Shinjuku we went to the largest Tower records that I have ever seen. It was 5 floors! The top floor had lots of english magazines and some books. From there we went to this smallish stoor called Uniqlo where I found Mama's birthday present (not sure if I'll be shipping it yet, have to go to the post office first). Next we went to Books Kinokunia (most of you should recognize this name) and it was gigantic also (6 floors), the entire top floor was english books and magazines. I was strong and didn't get any reading books, but I did get an english/japanese (meaning it has both) cookbook of japanese recipies that should be very useful. After finishing at the bookstore we decided that it was time to have lunch and meet up with Tara, so we took another subway (when I say "a" subway, sometimes that means more than one line, changing platforms etc) to Roppongi (where she was having her hair done). We were going to go to a mexican restaurant but it was misteriously closed so we went to Subway because it was across the street and we were hungry. Then we went and met Tara as she was getting out of her appointment. From there, we headded back to the train station and headed out toward Chiba, to Costco. After several trains and a bus we got there, great place! It has two floors that you get to by taking escalators that are built as ramps so you can take the carts on them. At this point it was about 4:20 and it closed at 6. So we went through the entire thing and they had most of the things you would expect at a costco (and some things you wouldn't, like sashimi, lots of seaweads and hard alcohol). However, they didn't have the two things I really wanted to get, a multi-region DVD player and a printer (they had three in one printer/fax/copiers but I only need the printer and I didn't want to pay for the combo), it was a but sad. So we were at Costo until it closed (actually a bit later than that 6:20 or so, the even had started to shut off the lights to encorage people to leave, there were so many people there)and then we had to retrace our steps to get back to Kanuma. So after a bus and three trains we got back to the JR train station that the special train (meaning not the local) left from. Unfortunatly we had missed the 8:10 train by about 10 minutes so we had to wait for the 9:11 one (trains are VERY on time here, don't ever hope that they'll be late). So, about 45 minutes later we got back to Kanuma. It was a very long day and I don't have alot to show for it right now. This is because, for a rather modest fee, you can ship everything you buy from Costco to your home (they have 3 kinds of boxes: dry, refrigerated and frozen), so I'll be getting everything I bought on monday (all of us together, it came to 1 frozen, 1 refrigerated and 4 dry boxes).

There, in a rather large nutshell, is my trip to Tokyo, tomorrow I will be sleeping in.